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Above is an example of what you can do with postal history and the interest and study that it offers (click on the illustation to enlarge it)

The classic stamps of Chile-the imperforate Columbus heads- are some of the most interesting in philately. They consist of one design with four denominations that Scott divides into fourteen major numbers and nearly one hundred varieties. I often wonder at the inconsistencies between different country listings. With some country’s classics (I’m thinking Luxembourg here) Scott

Here’s a fun little thing that just passed my desk. The Mercury Stamp Company was run in Germany before WWII by Mueller, Friedl and Herbert Bloch. They sold stamps, but most of their business was expertizing and they were good. They maintained a several hundred volume reference collection which became part of the Philatelic Foundation’s

When you look over the last forty years and bemoan all the things in the world that are not as good as they used to be one of the things you can’t put on the list is that there are more forgeries hobbling our hobby than there were. When I was entering professional philately, we

The famous collectors of yesteryear were a colorful group and none was more interesting than Edward Green. Ned was the son of Hetty Green who was called the “witch of Wall Street” but as far as being a mother was concerned you could have left out the Wall Street part. Hetty was the heir to

You never forget your first set-the one you picked carefully out of a catalog. Mine was when I was twelve. I was home from school, my parents having responded to whatever hypochondria I was manifesting that day. I was looking over my stamp collection which was really a Harris packet of a thousand hinged into

For years, thematic philately has been a poorly regarded step sister to traditional philately. Serious collectors collected by country, emphasizing classics and postal history. Less serious collectors collected cats or dogs on stamps. Somewhere in the middle having semi highbrow status was the so called classic thematics- Olympics, Boy Scouts, UPU and Red Cross.These were

Elections in America rarely have effect on philately or postal policy. No candidate is running on a platform of reduced postage rates and speedier service. Mail seems to be one of those few areas on which politicians have agreed not to disagree. Though a “postage is too damn high” party might win a few fringe

The first postage stamp was issued in 1840 and by 1860 every major country had followed suit. Stamps were a major money saving innovation for governments. Their use allowed the standardization of postal rates, compelled prepayment of postage and were a major labor saving innovation in post office accounting and staffing. But until 1878 and